Lennon had humiliated Winkler at the end of the Child Catcher case, and Winkler deeply regretted that he hadn’t taken the opportunity to bash Patrick’s head in with a heavy object. He probably could have made an official complaint too, maybe even got Lennon suspended. But, at the time, Lennon was a hero and Winkler was pretty sure he was slipping one to the guv behind his banged-up wife’s back. It would have been, what was the word? Impolitic. Better to bide his time and wait for Lennon to slip up. When he did, Winkler would be there to provide a hard landing.

Even better, maybe he would be the one to cause the slip.

Winkler couldn’t see how the three murders – the teen girls and his old woman, Nancy Marr – could be related. OK, so there were the cuts, but he was convinced Daniel Hamlet had made a mistake there. It was a coincidence, that was all. Nancy’s case was dissimilar in every other way. Two victims were young and nubile while the other was well past her sell-by date. Unlike the other two, Nancy’s murder was in her home. They were in different areas of south London, the girls miles apart from Nancy. There was nothing at all to connect Nancy to the other two victims except that they’d all been female and had met with a nasty end. Winkler was grudgingly pleased that Lennon didn’t seem to think there was much of a connection between the murders either, but he didn’t trust him. He was likely to steal the case from under Winkler’s nose – or steal the credit if they did turn out to be connected.

The best thing to do, Winkler decided, was to pretend to go along with Suzanne’s plea for cooperation while doing two things. First, solve the Marr case, or at least find a credible suspect, in order to stop Lennon muscling in. Second, use the ‘in’ the guv had given him to get involved in the more glamorous and exciting teen murders. Winkler had been a whisker away from cracking the Child Catcher case, had put in a lot of the important legwork, and received absolutely zero credit or thanks. That wasn’t going to happen this time.

He started the car and headed over to Wimbledon, thinking how sweet it would be when he got one over on Lennon.

Winkler stood outside the house where Nancy Marr had been murdered, wishing the building would give up its secrets, that a shaft of light would fall from the sky and reveal some devastating clue. He sighed as the sky remained grey and unhelpful. He was going to have to rely on his brains rather than miracles.

Being honest with himself, he hadn’t put an enormous deal of effort into solving this murder. Nancy Marr had no good friends and only one close relative: a son in his late fifties who lived in Yorkshire, whose main concern appeared to be how quickly he’d be able to sell the house and pocket the money. There was a ‘For Sale’ sign outside now, but, as the scene of a brutal murder, this property hadn’t shifted, despite the property boom that was going on at the minute.

His emotional indifference and unconcealed interest in his mother’s money had made the son, George Marr, the initial suspect. But he had a rock-solid alibi. He’d been in Majorca with his partner and a couple of friends and there was nothing that pointed towards George hiring a hitman to bump off his mum.

Winkler’s next line of inquiry had focused on known burglars in the locality – he’d got the team to check out a dozen other known names, but none of them appeared guilty. They’d done the usual, going door to door, interviewing the neighbours, with no joy. No-one had heard the old woman scream. And there was no useful forensic evidence.

So, with no relatives or friends to pressure the police and no great media interest in the case – after an initial cry of outrage and a leader article about ‘the sickness in our society’, the local paper had soon lost interest – Winkler had been able to put this investigation on the back-burner. It hurt, though, that his clearance rate, which was excellent, was affected. Winkler didn’t do failure. So he was pleased now that he had the motivation to reignite it. Somebody around here must have seen something. It was time to start knocking on doors again.

Chapter 15

Day 4 – Patrick

Patrick and Gill regarded one another warily from opposite sofas. It was ten o’clock on Sunday evening, his and Bonnie’s first night back in their own house, and Bonnie had only just settled back in her bedroom. She’d grizzled and fussed for hours and they had taken it in turns to read to her and stroke her until eventually she passed out from sheer exhaustion, her bum in the air and her grubby knitted Peppa Pig under her armpit. Patrick couldn’t shift the uneasy feeling that maybe she remembered something bad had happened to her in that little room. He wished they had a third bedroom they could have redecorated so she could have had a fresh start in there, but they didn’t. The house was too small.

Patrick guiltily upended the almost finished bottle of Merlot into his wine glass. He’d downed most of it in between his Bonnie-shifts, although he was technically still on duty. There was so much going on in his head, after finding Jessica’s body and all the subsequent interviews he’d done, that now all he wanted to do was to block it all out so he could focus on this new chapter in their lives. He just prayed that he wouldn’t be called back to the station; not tonight.

Gill was sipping cautiously at half a glass – she’d never been a big drinker, but said that now she drank even less. He almost wished she would – perhaps it would make the atmosphere more relaxed, had they both been half-cut. But her counsellor strongly recommended against it, for obvious reasons.

‘So,’ Gill said shyly, staring intently into her glass. ‘This is awkward, isn’t it?’

‘It’s like a weird sort of first date.’ He laughed mirthlessly and then, when he saw how crushed she looked, backtracked. ‘No, I mean, it’s not really, of course, it’s you and me, and how many dates have we been on? I just meant in terms of feeling . . . strange.’

She nodded, but he could see he’d upset her. Was this how it was going to be from now on? Him having to tread on eggshells around her, terrified of saying the wrong thing, constantly worrying that she would lose it again? He forced himself to stand up and walk across the room to her. He sat down close to her and put his arm around her shoulders. It still felt weird. This is my wife, he had to keep reminding himself, glancing down at her wedding ring, trying to feel an echo of the happiness that had consumed him the day he’d slipped it onto her finger.

‘It’s great to be home,’ he whispered into her ear, gazing at the side of her face, unable to prevent himself noticing how much of a toll the last two years had taken on her appearance. Her skin had a permanent greyish tinge that never used to be there, and her dark brown hair, once so shiny and buoyant, was flat and dull.

They needed a holiday, he thought. All three of them.

He felt her shoulder relax a little under his hand and saw the side of her cheek curve up into a smile. ‘This is our new start, right?’

She nodded again, but she didn’t seem overly enthusiastic either.

‘How do you feel about it, Gill?’ he ventured. ‘Are we OK?’ He realised he was asking himself that question as much as her.

In reply, she turned to kiss him. It was the first time they had properly kissed for two years, and initially it was clumsy, teeth clashing, tongues out of synch. Patrick felt like he was fourteen again. That thought in turn led him to have an unwelcome flash of Jessica McMasters’ disfigured body spread-eagled on the dustsheet of the makeshift studio floor earlier that day, with the trappings of a real photo shoot around her, lights and reflectors, making a mockery of a studio portrait. Stupid girl, he thought. How could she have been taken in like that? He would make sure he brought Bonnie up to be far more street-smart.